Widespread soil contamination in the El Paso/Juarez region poses serious public health risk, mostly due to windblown particulate matter originating at numerous industrial sites polluted with heavy metals. To reduce the detrimental public health effects caused by heavy metals, it is imperative to remediate these areas. Cost effective and environmentally sound approaches are necessary to clean up these sites. The use of plants to up take heavy metals is an innovative technology proven to be successful in both soil and aqueous heavy metal clean up operations. However, most of the plants that have been identified as potential metal hyperaccumulators only grow in areas that are more fertile and cannot survive in desert regions. Investigation into the potential for desert species to uptake heavy metals will contribute significantly to the growing body of knowledge of the mechanisms of plants that allow them to uptake heavy metals (phytoremediation). This technology is especially appropriate in desert regions where the soils are light textured and can become air-born at very low wind velocities. Because there are numerous industries in the El Paso/Juarez area that generate heavy metals as by-products of their industrial processes, inhalation of air-borne contaminants has become a major health concern. In order to develop a method to ameliorate this situation, the specific aims of our study include: 1) The growth of desert plant seedlings in climate-controlled agar, hydroponic, and soil media using the following plants: Guayule (Parthenium argentatum); Fourwing saltbush (Atriplex canescens); Desert willow (Chilopsis linearis); Palo verde (Cercidium spp.); and Tar bush (Flourensia cernua); 2) To perform multi-metal solution experiments in the three media types mentioned in (1); 3) The determination of the specific metal-chelating agents (phytochelatins) in desert plants that allow them to uptake heavy metals. Microscopic and spectroscopic techniques will be used to establish specific uptake pathways. The long term goal of this research is to identify suitable species for phytoremediation and define a protocol for screening desert plants to assess their metal uptake capability. Inhalation of wind-born heavy metal contaminated particulates has been documented in this region as a significant health problem. The continuing research is directly related to the reduction of the public health risks for the local population.